BLAST FROM THE PAST: Funeral for a friend, Jim Davenport

Funeral for friend, Jim Davenport

Christmas 2014 letter

Friends and family,

Yes ... the letter at Christmas carries on. A day later than last year, but not too late, we hope. I was thinking of not doing it, but tradition is what keeps us going. 

The Guilfoyles of Fort Mill have had some ups and some downs this year, but I think the ups outnumber the downs.

On the downside, I am still missing my Dad. Particularly around the holidays, or any week with a “day” in it. He was the bright center of our family, always one with a joke.

It’s just that now I am at the point with Stephen Christopher where it would be really nice to bounce questions off Bud. How did he manage four kids? How did he balance it all? Is it really tougher these days? Or are we, as a society, just not as capable? Or am I not?

I try to imagine what he would say, but if I could, I wouldn’t need to ask.

Also still missing my best furry friend. Harry, my first dog, died a couple of months after Dad. Annie, our other dog, has become the most surprising gentle girl. She was hyper-competitive with Harry, it turns out, but now she just wants to be around us.

She was attacked by another dog and suffered about eight nasty bites. It was scary, but she has recovered. Except for one day when she steered clear of that house where it happened (we have to go by it every day for our walk), she shows no long-term issues with it.

Patricia and I also lost a dear friend this year: Rick Bacon, our former boss. We basically met because of him. Always generous, big-hearted and full of laughter, Rick died after a short battle with cancer. We miss him terribly, particularly when we need a laugh.

I remain a copy editor and page designer working in Hickory, N.C., designing newspaper pages (sports right now) since October of 2010.  I work primarily  for Florence, S.C., as well as for papers in North Carolina and Alabama.

The people I work with are terrific, but it’s a LONG commute with terrible  hours. My car hit 250,000 miles last week.

Patricia remains ensconced in the Diocese of Charlotte, N.C.. where she is editor of the Catholic News Herald.

She and her paper hosted the national Catholic media conference in June. It was a BIG DEAL. Hundreds of reporters and newspaper professionals from all over the U.S., Canada and even from Rome came to Charlotte for the event.

I got to attend an Adobe workshop held at the event. Stephen came up with me and we swam in the hotel pool, and he played pool for the first time.

They had a bunch of priests, a bishop and an archbishop or two, and Pope Francis’ social media manager. Jim Caviezel was there promoting his football film. Prima donna.

Patricia isn’t like me and can’t instantly remember how many awards her paper won. “A lot” — 16, including best coverage of religious liberty issues, for her paper, and individually, Patricia placed in best multi-media package. Her staff has been doing a lot of web stuff. She also got an honorable mention for coverage of that terrible abortion clinic I mentioned in last year’s letter.

It has been a good year for our son, Stephen Christopher. He is now 8 and a second-grader.

He has been on a few adventures with Mommy, and he has embarked on new chapters. We have all started “geo-caching,” but it’s mostly Patricia and Stephen right now.

We have changed Cub Scout packs. We used to be at Pack 219 at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church in Fort Mill. We met for den meetings three Mondays a week and a pack meeting on the other Monday each month. 

Stephen earned his Tiger rank in February at 219. I was his den leader. We went to summer day camp with 219. On top of his rank work, he also earned 18 “belt loops,” awards in specific skills. That’s a bunch.

With help from Uncle Johnny, he built a Pinewood Derby race car that was the fastest among the Tigers. He got to go the district level race, but it was a different kind of track and the wedge-shaped cars all won. Still, he got a trophy from the pack.

In the fall, we moved to Pack 9 at St. Patrick Cathedral Parish in Charlotte. That’s where we go to church. This pack has den meetings once a month, followed by the pack meeting, on a Sunday afternoon. 

I am Pack 9’s assistant cubmaster, God help the children.

Like last year, Stephen went on an overnight camping trip with Patricia and the other Scouts. I had to work and missed it, but we went on a family camping trip in November to Kings Mountain. I am still shivering.

Stephen is now working on a new Pinewood Derby car AND his Wolf rank. He convinced at least one friend to join and thus earned a “recruiter” badge. The pack went caroling at a nursing home last week.

We know we haven’t been around as much as we could. We are doing well, but our life is just non-stop hectic most days, so that when we get some free time together, we just generally want to do something quick and easy and together. But never doubt our affection.

Have a merry Christmas. (Email is still the best way to reach me. I check it every day.)

“We love you anyway.”

Stephen, Patricia, Stephen Christopher, and Annie

sguilfoyle@comporium.net

Dec. 22, 2014

BLAST FROM THE PAST: A Freedom of Information editorial

This is kind of raw. Found it on my computer looking for something else.
It is either an editorial I wrote to help out my wife when she was publisher of the Fort Mill Times. Or an editorial I adapted from one I wrote, to help her out.
It's way too long to have run anywhere. But it sums up all I know about Freedom of Information. I will be back later to correct any typoes. It will have some just for being a digital copy 12 years or older sitting around as a text document.
Anyway. ...

Anyone who tells you there’s no “right to know" is right, but  in only the most technical sense.
The right to know isn't a constitutional right, but in South Carolina, it is a right written into law. That law is the S.C. Freedom of Information Act.
It is based on a simple premise -- to know and participate in their government, the people must have access to the meetings and the records of their government.
The people have a right, enacted into laws, to know what their government is doing -- from the smallest governmental level, such as Tega Cay City Council, to the highest levels of government.
Elsewhere on our opinion pages, you will see a guest column from S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, who says it has been a policy of his administration. He promised such a policy while campaigning, but one of his first steps as Governor was to propose closing his Cabinet meetings.
He was eligible under the law to close his meetings when they met the conditions already in the law, but he just wanted to close them as a blanket policy.
It was a vigorous press, represented by the S.C. Press Association, that convinced the governor to hold the open cabinet meetings he has held since taking office. We can see no signs that our government has been hindered in its capacity to serve us since then.
Sanford says having open government is something he wants to do, and we applaud him for his openness.
But not all our government agencies and officials are quite so forthcoming. In another accompanying column, S.C. Chief Justice Jean Toal reminds not only our readers but all government officials and agencies in this state that openness isn't a policy one can choose to follow or not follow. It is the law.
The primary purpose of the S.C. Freedom of Information Act is to protect its citizens from government secrecy, Toal writes. She is quoting numerous decisions by the court.
When our governments want to go behind closed doors or to withhold public records from the people -- who own the records and pay for them -- they must have a damn good reason.
In another state Supreme Court decision, the court ruled that the FOIA creates "an affirmative duty" on the part of government to open meetings and provide records.
When a government agency says it has to charge you hundreds of dollars to make copies of records in response to a request, they say it is because of all the "extra" work they are doing.
The aforementioned decision, in plain English, means responding to the public IS the job of government. Providing records IS government's job. Holding open meetings IS government's job.
In the state of South Carolina, the right to know is not a constitutional right, but it is a right put into our law.
The Constitution of the United States doesn't have a specifically stated "right to know," but you can look at historical precedent to conclude our Founding Fathers believed there was a right to know.
Specifically, our first President, George Washington, set that precedent.
The President is required by the Constitution to give information to Congress from time to time. As such, "Congress from the beginning has claimed, conversely, the right to ask the President for information," reports a Web site dedicated to the Constitution.. "Washington was called upon by the House of Representatives for papers regarding the defeat of General St. Clair's forces in 1791 by the Miami Indians. After a three-day consideration of the question by Washington and his cabinet, which was regarded as of the greatest importance as a precedent, it was decided that the House had a right to copies of the papers.:
Washington and his Cabinet decided that it was the people's government, so it delivered the papers to the U.S. House. The representatives of the people.
You. It's your government. They are your meetings. The documents are your documents.
It is Open Government Week in South Carolina. If you believe, as many in government do, that it can have the secrets it wishes, hold meetings away from your scrutiny and withhold documents on a whim, then you believe that Americans are subjects to a government that rules them.
Believe in open government, and you believe that Americans are free citizens who participate in the process. We govern ourselves.
President Teddy Roosevelt said it best -- "The government is us...You and me!"
Open Government makes that a reality.

"A Big Heart, Open to People"

By Patricia Larson Guilfoyle

Rick Bacon was there before Patricia Larson got dressed to marry me, and he was there for me and her long before we ever met.

#RickBacon freaked the hell out of me before we'd ever even met. I had driven down from Athens, Ga., where I was wrapping up graduate school and awas nxious to get back into the newsroom. I had a job interview in the morning with Richard N. Bacon, regional publisher of the Barnwell Group of Community Newspapers, Inc.

CNI's Senior Editor Phil Hudgins just smiled when he had told me Rick wanted to interview me down in Barnwell. Phil knew me from when I worked in St. Mary's, Ga., for then-Publisher Dalton Sirmans. Dalton hired this naive 16-year-old who walked in one day off the street asking for a job. ("Can you write?" he said. "Sure," I said, and brought him my latest term paper about graviton particles and the space-time continuum. He hired me the next day, and one of my first assignments was covering a pipe-bomb explosion at the new Subway in town. I was hooked!)

Well, Phil knew Dalton, and Phil knew Rick, and Rick knew Dalton. So before I knew it, I was driving east, trying to figure out where the heck in South Carolina Barnwell was.

I checked into the one motel in town and went to my room. Before I had even swung the door open all the way, the phone on the table started ringing. The sudden noise made me jump -- who in the world knew where I was? I mean, I wasn't even inside the room yet.

Of course, it was Rick.

"Hi! It's Rick Bacon. Do you want to get something to eat?"

That was the first thing I realized about Rick: Nothing – and no one – got past Rick. He was crazy like a fox.

We headed over to Anthony's, one of his regular spots. Of course, he knew the waitress and pretended to give her a hard time. He ordered a beer and asked if I wanted one, too. I thought, "I'd never been on a job interview like this before." But Phil had told me that he was good buddies with Dalton, so he couldn't be all that weird.

Boy, was I wrong. Rick was a lot weirder than Dalton. Dalton liked to drive gold-colored cars and made fun of his alma mater, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College ("I'm just a poor ol' country boy from ABAAAAAC," he'd say in his best south Georgia drawl). But Rick had a thousand crazy voices, which he'd pull out at just the right – or wrong – moment, and his collection of pig paraphernalia bordered on the fanatical. Don't even get me started on his cars.

I don't even remember what all we talked about, sitting there in Anthony's eating open-faced steak sandwiches and drinking beer. I just remember thinking, "I gotta come work for this guy."

Turns out, Rick had already decided to hire me after talking with Phil and Dalton, so the entire "interview" was just to test me.

That was the next thing I realized about Rick: Rick was awesomely cool. He could be exasperating, but only in the nicest possible way, and for all the right reasons. And he knew what was important as a leader and manager, whether people liked him or not.

The next three years were a blur, but a couple of moments will always stand out.

Less than a week into my job, Rick tells me I have to fire a sports correspondent. The guy had been writing for The People-Sentinel only about 50 years or so, he said. But people at the rec league baseball games he'd been covering smelled alcohol on his breath a lot. He had to go. 

"I've never fired anyone in my life," I told Rick. "Can't you do it?" 

"Nope," he said. "You're the editor. Oh, I've already called him, and he'll be here in a few minutes. Take him into the conference room."

Well, the guy came in, still smelling of alcohol. He cried like a baby when I gave him the news. At 23, I'd never seen a grown man cry in real life before. After he left and I went back to my desk, which I had strategically positioned right next to Rick's, I was shaking. I felt awful.

Rick looked over, with that fake-innocent look of his, and mouthed the words, "You bitch."

That was Rick. Rick could make you laugh no matter what.

Another moment that stands out was back at my desk, sitting right next to Rick. That week's edition had two big stories in it: One about students having sex in the bathrooms at Allendale High School, the other about workers accidentally wringing the necks of two ostriches that were the sideshow attraction at the local flea market, which happened to be owned by the mayor. I'm on the phone getting blessed out by the principal at Allendale High, when the mayor's wife walks in and sits down in the chair beside my desk. She doesn't care that I'm on the phone, she's just read the paper and is crying/mad because I've just ruined her husband's reputation.

"They didn't mean to hurt those ostriches – it was an accident."

Then on the phone: "You think writing about our problems is what you should be doing? You should be building up our schools, not tearing them down."

"The birds just got excited and pulled back on the ropes while they were being unloaded. They wrung their own necks, see?"

"Don't you know these kids are going to read that on the front page and think they can go have sex in any bathroom now? You're making our jobs harder."

I hung up on the principal and tried to explain things to the mayor's wife, but I could not get a word in edgewise.

Then Rick moseys over, puts on his best genteel Southern persona and takes the woman's hands in his, pulling her gently up from the chair as he pats her hands. He puts one arm around her shoulder to comfort her, as he steers her smoothly to the door. He's thanking her, he's soothing her, he's smiling at her in the kindest way possible. By the time she reaches the front door, she's smiling up at him and thanking us for the good job we're doing at the paper.

After the door swung shut, he turned around, bowing with an exaggerated flourish as everyone in the room applauded. He was the master!

That was the next lesson I learned from Rick: No matter what problems you're dealing with, other people have problems, too. Sometimes all people need is a sympathetic ear and a smile to cheer them up. And the Big Guy could cheer anyone up. Even people who got mad at him still liked and respected him.

At some point along the way I started calling him Big Guy, from "WKRP." And since he had a nickname for nearly everyone, he started calling me PL or PT. Through the few months I worked in Barnwell to when I moved to Winnsboro, he was always there with support and encouragement, and when I screwed up or was unprepared, he was there to admonish as well.

I certainly wasn't looking to leave CNI, but when I got an unexpected job offer to go work up in Fort Mill for literally twice the money, I dreaded making the call to Rick.

I stumbled my way through the call, explaining that I didn't want to leave but didn't think I could pass this chance by. 

He asked how much they were offering, and when I told him, he said, "Hell, PT, don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. You'd be crazy not to take it." He always gave you his honest opinion.

Over the years I've often found myself asking in different situations, "What would Rick do?" His advice, his jokes, his voice, his facial expressions, they're all ingrained in my mind.

When he stood up for Steve at our wedding, and when he met our son, I saw a different side of Rick. The kinder, gentler, grandfatherly Rick. No longer the boss, but still the Big Guy.

I called him for advice when I was eyeing whether to jump from McClatchy, where I'd worked for over a decade, to go edit the newspaper for the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. I explained that it was less money but I was working such long hours that I never saw my baby son. McClatchy seemed to be going downhill fast, and the future didn't feel secure. 

"What should I do?" I asked.

He listened, then he reminded me of his test for any job: "PT, does the money outweigh the crap?" Then he said, "The Catholic Church has been around for 2,000 years. I don't think they're going anywhere."

I took the job.

The most important lesson I learned from Rick happened in Barnwell, one night in 1998 about 3 a.m.

I was tired of sleeping in the motel room in Winnsboro, where he'd put me as publisher a few weeks earlier. I wanted to sleep back home in Barnwell, in my own bed. So when I wrapped up work that night, I headed back on the all-too-familiar drive down I-77 and Highway 3.

I fell asleep at the wheel just past the Barnwell County line, waking up just in time to sideswipe the concrete wall of the bridge and flip my car a couple times. It landed upside down in the middle of the road. As I crawled out of the hole where the window used to be, I cut my elbow on some broken glass, but other than that I was OK. When the ambulance dropped me at the Barnwell ER, they asked me who they should call. The only family I had, I said. 

"Call Rick Bacon."

When he arrived and saw that I was all right, he gave me a hug and cracked a few jokes to make me laugh. Then he took out a set of keys.

"What're those for?" I asked.

"Well, you'll need a car for a while, don't you?"

"You're going to give me the keys to your car, after I was stupid enough to wreck my own car?"

"It's a piece of crap Buick. Have fun, Crash."

That was Rick. He never hesitated to help people in need, no matter what. No questions, no demands, no exceptions.

In his last message to me, his voice was unnaturally soft. But it was the same old Rick.

"Mrs. Guilfoyle, this is Rick Bacon. And I just wanted to tell you that's a heck of a pope you've got now. He gives me faith that maybe all religion isn't all totally crap. Just wanted you to know that. Have a good day."

I hesitated calling him back, and got his voicemail when I did call. I left a dumb, rambling message – not knowing what to say or what to do, knowing it must have gotten pretty bad for him if he was talking about God and religion without cracking a joke.

What I wanted to tell him is that he was a lot like Pope Francis, and not just about their weight. I imagined him interrupting the serious stuff I was trying to say, to joke about priests fondling young boys – "Huh, huh," he'd grunt in his worst pervert voice – or about wearing a cassock – "Do they wear any underwear under that dress?"

I wanted to tell Rick that soon after he was elected, Pope Francis wrote an exhortation that spurred a lengthy interview with an Italian Jesuit editor and it went global. The Pope, starting with that newspaper interview, has recast the enduring Gospel message in a whole new light, encouraging people think about letting God back into their lives, I'd say. Pope Francis wants all of us to refocus on what's most important in life, because it's not all about us, it's about how much God loves us, no matter what. 

"The headline called the pope 'A Big Heart Open to God,'" I'd tell him.

"You're just the same, Big Guy – except your headline would be 'A Big Heart Open to People.'"

I wish I had had the chance to tell him that, and to say, "I love you, Big Guy."

Blast from the past: The column we did NOT run about Rick Bacon leaving

When #RickBacon left us in Barnwell to go to one of CNI's new daily newspapers in Florida, I was both sad and mad. I wrote this column, but we did not run it because Dan Johnson, our editor, and maybe Rick, thought it might come across as me berating the community for not being thankful enough.
I do not understand that objection, since I WAS trying to berate the community.
But anyway, this is about Rick's cred as a journalist, and worth it now, I think.

They've been talking about calling it a roast. What's better for him, one might think? Pork roast. Let's turn the temperature up — baked ham.

Fried Bacon.

We're going to have a little get together to bid farewell to Rick Bacon, regional publisher of the five papers and the press plant that comprise the Barnwell Region of Community Newspapers, Inc. Rick's moving on to bigger things, taking over one of CNI's two new daily newspapers in Florida.

A roast would be perfect for Rick. It's in keeping with his personality. He loves to joke. The old Dean Martin roasts often had risqu_ humor, and Rick has been known to make the ladies in the office blush. Thanks to the nuns at St. Raymond's Elementary School, I'm a repressed  Bronx Irish Catholic boy, so on occasion, he's turned even my pale face red.

But a roast is a completely light affair.

I'm not in the mood for just jokes. Rick's going, and I don't think the community fully understands what Rick has done here with The People-Sentinel.

I think we need to have an Irish wake, instead. A roast is food and jokes at a celebration. A wake is better food, better jokes, songs, some wailing and screaming. The best ones will have a knock-down drag-out of a fight. An Irish wake is as fun and funny as a roast, but it has an ironic twist. Ironic because the reason for the "party" is gone.

Rick would tell folks he's just a marketing guy who came here with a focus on the advertising. Or he'd say, "I'm just an ignorant hillbilly," right before he was set to kill the college boys with their stupidity or lack of insight.

Rick made the newspapers in this region some of the best NEWSpapers in the state. If you ask him how, he'll say he hired good writers and a good editor to herd them. There's some truth to that. In the last four years, The People-Sentinel has been named the best large, and The Allendale County Citizen Leader was named the best small weekly newspapers in South Carolina. Rick's editors and reporters have pulled in crates of awards. The People-Sentinel was touted in a college journalism textbook. A textbook example of a good paper, literally.

Hiring people he says are journalists isn't the only thing he did, however. He indulged his journalists, and by by doing so, indulged the community, though the community doesn't know how much.

Here are some examples.

1) During the consideration of the regional hospital, we got the request for proposals and the proposal by the company that was going to come here. I suggested we run them intact, even though it would take up a lot of space.

Now, a full page newspaper ad costs about $600. Rick gave me multiple pages to run the proposals.

2) Our local high schools are afforded the opportunity to run a full page "newspaper" in The People-Sentinel each week, if the students choose to take it. Barnwell High has taken the most advantage of it. If any other newspaper in the country provides similar space, I'd imagine that it's done at charge. Barnwell High had more than 30 such pages last year, and is on pace to meet or beat that number this year. Williston-Elko and Blackville-Hilda High Schools did pages after the yearbook is completed. Jefferson Davis Academy wants in now. Allendale-Fairfax High School wants in.

We scan photos, provide some paper and a little technical advice, but we don't produce these pages. The students do. But this was Rick's idea, and what he's doing is giving away a piece of the newspaper that would make him money if ads were on it. It's an amazing bit of community service for which Rick has never gotten thanks or credit.

3) During the Bicentennial Year, we went all out. We usually have two color pics on our A fronts, maybe three on our community fronts. Color photos require extra time and effort, and cost an arm and a leg. The Bicentennial parade was featured on our Community Section front page with more than 30 color pictures. That many pictures on a weekly's page is rare. That many pics is unheard of. As good as that was, we beat it. We had a color Community front on the downtown the Fourth of July stuff, and a color Community page on the fireworks. I thought our Bicentennial coverage was extraordinary for any newspaper of any size, yet our coverage was barely mentioned, then quickly dismissed, at the Bicentennial Closing Ceremony.

4) Rick's most impressive thing, to me, was just letting me tell one story. I covered a murder trial that ended earlier than expected. The story would have lost its impact if we pieced it out over weeks. I stayed up 36 hours straight, and in the end, handed Rick three full pages of stories, complete with photos, detailing a murder, its effects on a family and on why the trial ended the way it did. It was a good story, worth telling, but I still thought Rick would say it was too much. But Rick gave me the space to tell it. He even let me go home and get a couple of hours rest before I had to come back and do the rest of the news section.

The thing was, he listened when we told him what we needed, but he never deferred to our judgment. It was always his decision.

Rick Bacon has given out color pages and full pages, even though it hit him in his wallet. It cost him a little, but it was always in the best interests of our readers. He's not just a marketer, and he's certainly not an ignorant hillbilly.

Rick Bacon is a journalist. It's the highest praise I know to give.

Barnwell is losing a talented journalist.

Do you understand why I want this to be an Irish wake?

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Rick goes bald (in 1999)

This is adapted from what I sent to the CNI Newsflash back in 1999. I can't remember if they accommdated, but I asked them to put this box on the front, and the article in back. Aboubt #RickBacon.

Who’s hair is this?

Why is it on the floor? 

See inside for the gory details.

Below is a webbed up version of the fun we had.

BEFORE

During

After?

Or going, going, ????

It was kind of a dare.

Barnwell Regional Publisher Rick Bacon promised out loud that he would shave his head if certain members of a local civic club donated some money to the United Way.

Unfortunately for him, those members were actually listening, and donated the money.

On Jan. 6, 1999, he went up to the PaceSetter Barber Shop in Barnwell and barber Renee Patton did the deed, as the happy crowd of United Way donors looked on and poked fun at Bacon.

“You ever had this done before, Rick?” one asked.

“”AF12807807,” Bacon replied, giving his military serial number from when he was inducted into the Air Force at Amarillo Air Force Base.

“Name, rank and serial number, that’s all I’m supposed to give, he later asked.

Another donor, David Cannon, who has helped the paper with information on a local drive to raise relief supplies for the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, asked Bacon if he had a magic marker on hand.

“That way you can mark where your hair used to be, so you’ll know where to stop washing your face.”

“That’s a good one,” Rick replied. “You getting this?”

After it was all said and done, the ladies in attendance said they actually liked the way Bacon’s shorn head looked.

“I’m disappointed,” Cannon said. “I was hoping he’d look much worse than that. Feel like I wasted my money.”

Several members of the newspaper’s staff gave visible gasps when Rick returned to the office. They were surprised to see what he had done, even though it was announced in the newspaper that day.

“I resolve to lose a headful of hair for 1999,” Bacon wrote in his column, Bacon’s Bits. “The good news is, thanks to Just for Men hair color, I feel safe in predicting that my hair will grow back a beautiful shade of medium brown.”

But his hair is coming back in mixed shades of gray and something else. So maybe he needs “Just for” something else.

UPDATE 2: Everything is better with Bacon

UPDATE 2: Rick's obit. HYSTERICAL. Read it here, or below.

NORTON!

The best boss I ever had, has died.
One of the best friends I ever had, has died.
A man who took to mentoring me and sometimes treated me like a stupid son, has died.
And one of the funniest human beings on the planet has died.
Rick Bacon.
A lot of time, people look around and say, "I owe him everything."
It's often just that. Something people say.
He plucked me out of one rural corner of South Carolina where I was just a reporter, asked me to come to his papers in Barnwell and Allendale and to do what I do best. Kick ass, in a journalistic sense.
He gave me generally free rein, and he always backed me up. Except for a couple of times, including the time he brought me into his office, told me to close the doors and then asked "Who the f--- I thought I was."
He was the last person to pay me a fair wage straight up, though not the last person to try to do so. So I have a toy or two, thanks to him.
But he had previously hired as an editor a woman named Patricia Larson. Transferred her to be a publisher in Winnsboro before I moved to Barnwell. But she came to Barnwell once a week for production work.
The guy who, inadvertantly, arranged for me to meet my wife, has died.
Without Rick, I guess I don't have Patricia. Without Rick, I guess I don't have our son as well.
He was always there for me, with a joke to cheer me up, with advice about a job that maybe wasn't going so well, to offer a reference for a new job, whatever kind I'd like. The truth, if that would help. A hedge, if it would not.
His lessons were very quick and deadly.
I don't remember when I talked to him after 9/11, but I was going on about the attack, about the Twin Towers, about how my cousins were nowhere near and of course safe.
Then he said, "Candy's sister and brother-in-law are OK."
Brought it quickly home. Candy's sister and brother-in-law lived in or around Washington DC. He was in the military and had, I think, a job at the Pentagon.
9/11 wasn't just about the attacks on New York, but being a native New Yorker, I see the attacks that way.
He would ask a question, you'd start talking and when he could get a word in edgewise, he'd say, "Let me ask that question in a different way." Then he'd ask that question the exact same way. to drive home the point. Listen.
I was remembering some of his stories. Many true. There was the radio host on the religious station in Burnsville, NC, where he worked, who, when reading the Bible and came across a word he did not know, would simply say, "Big word."
His BBQ hog call he used to do.
Sometimes he just got great moments out of pure luck. His last day on the job, when he left Barnwell to go to Lake City, Fla., he was just about to leave when a song came on the radio.
This song --

He came back for the first verse, than twirled and danced his way out the door. Even some of my co-workers who were cursing his name a month before were crying.
And laughing, at his timing and his little spin move.
Rick told me once that he sometimes stopped calling people who said they were friends, just to see how long it took for them to call with something other than a request for him to be a reference. It was a test.
I think that was part of the reason behind his abandonment of Facebook a while back. We have "friends" on Facebook. Friends we don't talk to in the real world anymore. It's too easy to count your friends and not be a friend you can count on.
I did my best to stay in touch. Usually we would have email exchanges, and that would prompt him to send me a message, in which he asked, always, for my wife's phone number.
I think he wanted to hear her voice.
In February, he asked me about my other favorite boss of all time, Mardy Jackson. Asked me if she had died of cancer. I am wondering now if that was a roundabout way of preparing me for what came in April.
April 14.
I have some work to do.

I received word a couple of weeks ago that I have lung cancer.

Met with the radiation oncologist Friday to decide on a regiment.
Meeting with chemo oncologist this Wednesday.

I’ve had several tests, but we are going to do another c/t scan, a pet scan, a brain scan and another biopsy to see if there has been any ‘spread.’

If not we have a curative plan. If so, it’s just a treatment plan.

I have a good attitude and am going to do everything they ask me to do to whoop it’s ass.

Fighting with cancer jokes of the week.

This weeks:

Why did the cancer patient cross the road?

So he could be hit by a truck.

Keep smiling.

You may call me:

Chemo-Sabe

I responded, rambling as a jerk, but trying to make him smile. I said we'd pray, of course, but I would do anything to help, particularly anything that would get me named his heir.

Little chance of that, though.

Ten more days passed, and he started a little column, for friends, that he would NOT post on the Internet as a blog, but just send to those he wanted to send it to. The title was based on a movie we both loved. From Miracle Max in the Princess Bride, he called it, "Have Fun Storming the Cancer."

There were to be multiple installments in which he detailed his attempts to kill cancer with humor.

There was just one more.

My sister was doing Relay for Life, because Dad died from his breast cancer returning last year. And we got a luminary for Rick. I emailed him a picture of it, and we talked back and forth via email a bit.

He sent me back a picture of that luminary posted above his desk at work. I also saw a picture of a county highway sign, that said, Yancey County, Shallow Gene Pool, No Diving.

He said someone made it up based on one of his jokes.

I sent him an email about a friend who got a job in the same building where he worked. As I expected he would, he told me to tell her to drop by.

But I also told him about these episodes of The People's Pharmacy on NPR devoted to cancer that he should probably check out.

He told me he had some unexpected pain.

"I think you are too worried about me," he wrote. That was July 21.

Not enough, apparently.

There was one more email, but it was totally nondescript.

Since he knew her first, it's only fitting that his last words to us went to Patricia, albeit to her voicemail.

"Mrs. Guilfoyle, this is Rick Bacon," he says, his voice sounding a little weak, a little shaky. "And I just wanted to tell you that's a heck of a Pope you've got now. He gives me faith that ... maybe all religion isn't all totally crap. Just wanted you to know that. Have a good day."

That was July 30. I get a kick out him calling her Mrs. Guilfoyle, for one thing. The pause after "He gives me faith that ..." makes me wonder. Was he, as normal, just going for the joke that followed? Or was he thinking about something else, but reverted to type because he wasn't quite ready to admit it to others.

Patricia told me she played phone tag trying to get back with him a bit.
That was, we learned, the day he learned that the treatment plan wasn't working. On Friday, Patricia got a few messages, one on Facebeook and one from Rick's son Jon, calling on Rick's cell phone, missing her, of course, but letting her know what happened the night of Aug. 7.
She called me, around 1:30, 2 on Aug. 8 to see if I had heard on my own. As I was just waking up to go to my night-time job, I had not.
Everything is better with Bacon. The afterlife, therefore, is better.

I was, and remain, stunned.

From the second linked story below. "A “Celebration to Remember” that Bacon planned before his death is scheduled from 1-3 p.m. Aug. 23 at Pier 41 Seafood in Lumberton. Bacon asked people not to waste money by sending flowers. Instead, he suggests those who want to remember him do a random act of kindness or donate to their favorite charity."

Story on Rick's death in the Richmond County Daily Journal.

County mourns the loss of Rick Bacon, from the Richmond County Daily Journal.

His obituary, in case the link doesn't work.

Richard Norton (Rick) Bacon 

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LUMBERTON — Richard Norton Bacon (Rick) of Lumberton has left the building. His friends will tell you he's in a better place. The rest will say they can smell the Bacon burning. He is stress-free and at peace.

The curtain came down on Thursday night at Southeastern Regional Medical Center.

He is survived by his loving wife of 29 years, Candace Smith Bacon. He is also survived by his son Jonathan Bacon and wife Beth of High Point; daughter Melody Kearse of Rock Hill, S.C., and son Bryan Kearse and wife Liz of Raleigh. Five grandchildren made his life better with their visits.

Rick loved dogs. Trixie, Richie, James Brown Beans and Mr. Woo were the last in a long line of hairy hogs that shared his bed and his affection.

He was born in Auburn, N.Y., July 16, 1947, the son of the late Elizabeth Dunster Bacon and Frederick Neil Bacon. He was also predeceased by a brother, Ted.

He drifted south from upstate New York in 1962 to the mountains of North Carolina, where he graduated without honors in the class of '65 at East Yancey High School. After one undistinguished year at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Rick enlisted in the United States Air Force. He became a Morse intercept operator and spent two and a half years overseas in Turkey and Italy.

After another failed college attempt at Mars Hill College, Rick got his start in media at WKYK radio in Burnsville, N.C. From radio it was on to newspaper, where Rick spent 26 years publishing newspapers, moving from state-to-state looking for a town that would keep him. From Spruce Pine, N.C. to Barnwell, S.C. to Lake City, Fla., he survived buying a Buick LeSabre (the official car of geezers) and a heart attack that convinced him it was time to leave Florida unless he wanted to die young. He headed back to North Carolina to live and work in Rockingham and Lumberton, where he had a good life.

Rick was a Rotarian for over 25 years. He served as president of the Rockingham Rotary Club in 2012-13 and was proud of the work that Rotary did in the community and around the world. He was a two-time Paul Harris Fellow.

In March of 2014, Rick was diagnosed with lung cancer. He celebrated with yet another trip to a Cincinnati Reds game. If you knew Rick, you knew that he was a loyal Reds fan since the late '50s without ever living a day in Ohio. He often said, "There's no explaining taste."

Cremation will take place at the family's convenience and his ashes will be kept in an urn, passed from family member to family member until no one can remember what's in the jar.

Everyone who remembers Rick is asked to celebrate his life in their own way; telling a 'He wasn't so bad' or 'What an ass' story of their choosing. Boiled shrimp and a beverage of your choice should be part of any celebration.

Instead of flowers, Rick would hope that you will do an unexpected act of kindness for some less fortunate soul. Rick liked to buy food for the car behind him in the drive-thru lane, or a meal for a military couple (if he could do it without them knowing who paid). That's a lot cheaper than flowers.

A memorial luncheon in Rick's honor will be held at Pier 41 in Lumberton on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2014 from 1 to 3 p.m. at Pier 41 Seafood. Adult beverages will follow at widow Candy's house on Camellia Lane. To the crooks reading this: We left an armed guard and the four killer dogs home from the luncheon. If you come to steal, they will hurt you.​